[Tlc] T-proposal

[justinm at ucr.edu]

FYI. Forwarded from CJ Hinke.
Thanks,
justin

FUNDING FREEDOM


For the past two and a half years years, Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) has been funded from the pockets of our most active supporters and all tasks have been accomplished by volunteers.


This has restricted FACT's effectiveness in several ways. It has meant there was not enough money to aggressively pursue vital facets of our anti-censorship campaign and also that we could not be as timely in responding to issues as we would have wished.


Funding FACT's Banned Books Project: Celsius 233, will allow us to create an online archive of hundreds of books about politics, history, religion, culture, gender, and the monarchy in Thai language, about 1,200 books to date, under our agreement with Internet Archive and Google Books and make them available for free download. This primary server will be mirrored by at least seven (as of June 1, 2009) academic servers so that there is a reduced chance of Thai government blocking.


This project has generated a lot of international interest and we hope to help anti-censorship activists from many other countries to put collections of banned books online in their local languages. All overseas participation is without cost to FACT and will be of particular use to the academic, research and writing communities. Funding is primarily for research and access to banned books, computer and scanner hardware and staff salary.


The library of Thammasat University's Political Science Faculty has produced research on Thailand's books officially banned by listing in the Royal Gazette 1850-1999.  This research, though examining a long time-frame, was relatively straightforward because it involved only a single source publication.


>From 1999-2007, many more books have been unofficially banned or subject to self-censorship by institutions, distributors, publishers, bookstores.  In order to search these, the Thai popular and academic press must be examined, involving much more time.


This is expected to take around six months of research work. We think a budget of $15,000 - $18,000 can accomplish this goal.


FACT also plans booths at Thailand's two international book fairs attended by over a million public visitors through our membership in the Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand.


Some numbers: Of a population of 65 million, 13 million Thais are Internet users or about 20%, about 25% of whom access the Internet from cybercafes. More than 50,000 Websites are blocked by Thai government agencies and an unspecified further number by Thai ISPs; independent testing has revealed that 18.9% of URLs accessed from Thailand are blocked. The Herdict Project of OpenNet Initiative and Berkman Institute for Internet and Society at Harvard University has reported Thailand as No. 5 in the list of censoring countries. Although we have always been able to obtain secret Thai government blocklists from sympathisers, accurate testing ensures our continuing credibility.



CJ Hinke

Freedom Against Censorship thailand (FACT)

facthai at gmail.com

http://facthai.wordpress.com 

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu